Current Time in Alto Barinas, Venezuela

Alto Barinas is a large district in the southern part of the city of Barinas, the capital of Barinas State in western Venezuela. The name means upper Barinas, and it refers to the slightly higher ground on which the area was developed, giving it marginally cooler air and better drainage than the older centre. The city stands at the western edge of the llanos, the vast plains that stretch across central Venezuela, at the point where they meet the foothills of the Andes, and the mountains are visible on clear days rising abruptly to the northwest. The climate is tropical, hot throughout the year, with a pronounced rainy season from May to October when the plains flood.

Barinas has a population of around three hundred and fifty thousand, and Alto Barinas accounts for a substantial share of it. Unlike the colonial grid of the historic centre, it was laid out in the second half of the twentieth century as a planned expansion, with wide avenues, residential estates, shopping centres, clinics, schools and sports facilities, and it has become the most modern and commercially active part of the city.

Barinas itself was founded in 1577 under the name Altamira de Cáceres and later moved to its present site. It grew as a centre of tobacco cultivation, which in the eighteenth century made the province genuinely prosperous, and later as a cattle and agricultural region. The city played a part in the wars of independence, when Simón Bolívar passed through with his forces, and the plains produced the horsemen who formed the backbone of the republican cavalry.

The economy of the region rests on cattle ranching, rice, maize, sugar cane, coffee from the Andean slopes and oil production from fields in the state. Barinas serves as the commercial and administrative hub for a large agricultural hinterland.

Llanero culture is the defining cultural feature. The joropo, played on harp, cuatro and maracas and danced with rapid footwork, is the music of the plains, and Barinas is one of its heartlands, producing many of the country's best known performers. Cattle work, coleo contests, and a cuisine of grilled beef, cachapas, cheese and river fish belong to the same tradition.

Landmarks in the wider city include the cathedral on the Plaza Bolívar, the colonial Palacio del Marqués, the Alberto Arvelo Torrealba museum honouring the poet of the plains and the parks along the Santo Domingo River. From Barinas the road climbs into the Andes towards Mérida, passing cloud forest and high páramo on one of the most beautiful drives in Venezuela.

Transport is by road, with highways east towards Guanare and north into the mountains, and by the local airport.

The Universidad Nacional Experimental de los Llanos Ezequiel Zamora has its main campus in the city, giving Barinas a large student population and a role as the educational centre of the plains.

Alto Barinas is important as the modern face of a historic llanos capital and as a comfortable base for exploring both the plains and the Venezuelan Andes.